Justin Bieber slammed fans for trolling Sofia Richie.

Canadian singer Justin Bieber is upset with his fans for bashing his rumoured girlfriend, Sofia Richie. The Baby singer threatened to make his Instagram private due to hateful comments about the daughter of legendary crooner Lionel Richie.

Selena Gomez's former boyfriend shared a black and white photo of him with the 17-year-old on the photo-sharing website. He wrote: "I'm gonna make my Instagram private if you guys don't stop the hate this is getting out of hand, if you guys are really fans you wouldn't be so mean to people that I like."

IBTimes UK

Bieber's personal life has always been a hot topic of discussion. In an earlier interview with Complex magazine, the Sorry hitmaker talked about his relationship with Gomez.

In the conversation, he jokingly advised not to fall in love. The Boyfriend singer said: "I moved in with my girlfriend when I was 18. Started my own life with her. It was a marriage kind of thing. Living with a girl, it was just too much at that age. But we were so in love. Nothing else mattered. We were all about each other."

"But when it's like that and you get your value from that, people will always disappoint you. Your girl or your dude, they're always going to disappoint you. Your full identity can't be in that person. My identity was in her. Her identity was in me. When stuff would happen, I would lose my freakin' mind, and she would lose her mind, and we would fight so hard because we were so invested in each other. Love is a choice. Love is not a feeling. People have made it seem in movies that it's this fairy tale. That's not what love is. You're not gonna want to love your girl sometimes but you're gonna choose to love her. That's something in life that I had to figure out. I can't lean on people. I got to lean on God. I gotta trust in him through all my situations," he added.